Black House by Stephen King

“Who is this?” he blurts.

“Officer Fucking Friendly,” the voice on the other end says, and clicks off.

In Lucky’s Tavern, Patty Loveless is now informing those assembled (older than the Sand Bar crowd, and a good deal less interested in nonalcoholic substances) that she can’t get no satisfaction and her tractor can’t get no traction. George Potter has finished his spaghetti, neatly folded his napkin (which in the end had to catch only a single drop of red-sauce), and turned seriously to his beer. Sitting close to the juke as he is, he doesn’t notice that the room has quieted with the entrance of three men, only one in uniform but all three armed and wearing what look too much like bulletproof vests to be anything else.

“George Potter?” someone says, and George looks up. With his glass in one hand and his pitcher of suds in the other, he is a sitting duck.

“Yeah, what about it?” he asks, and then he is snatched by the arms and shoulders and yanked from his spot. His knees connect with the bottom of the table, overturning it. The spaghetti plate and the pitcher hit the floor. The plate shatters. The pitcher, made of sterner stuff, does not. A woman screams. A man says, “Yow!” in a low and respectful voice.

Potter holds on to his partly filled glass for a moment, and then Tom Lund plucks this potential weapon from his hand. A second later, Dale Gilbertson is snapping on the cuffs, and Dale has time to think that it’s the most satisfying sound he’s ever heard in his life. His tractor has finally gotten some traction, by God.

This deal is light-years from the snafu at Ed’s; this is slick and tidy. Less than ten seconds after Dale asked the only question—“George Potter?”—the suspect is out the door and into the fog. Tom has one elbow, Bobby the other. Dale is still rattling off the Miranda warning, sounding like an auctioneer on amphetamines, and George Potter’s feet never touch the sidewalk.

Jack Sawyer is fully alive for the first time since he was twelve years old, riding back from California in a Cadillac Eldorado driven by a werewolf. He has an idea that later on he will pay a high price for this regained vividness, but he hopes he will just button his lip and fork over when the time comes. Because the rest of his adult life now seems so gray.

He stands outside his truck, looking in the window at Henry. The air is dank and already charged with excitement. He can hear the blue-white parking lot lights sizzling, like something frying in hot juices.

“Henry.”

“Affirmative.”

“Do you know the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’?”

“Of course I do. Everyone knows ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”

Jack says, “ ‘Was blind but now I see.’ I understand that now.”

Henry turns his blind, fearfully intelligent face toward Jack. He is smiling. It is the second-sweetest smile Jack has ever seen. The blue ribbon still goes to Wolf, that dear friend of his wandering twelfth autumn. Good old Wolf, who liked everything right here and now.

“You’re back, aren’t you?”

Standing in the parking lot, our old friend grins. “Jack’s back, that’s affirmative.”

“Then go do what you came back to do,” Henry says.

“I want you to roll up the windows.”

“And not be able to hear? I think not,” Henry tells him, pleasantly enough.

More cops are coming, and this time the blue lights of the lead car are flashing and the siren is blurping. Jack detects a celebratory note to those little blurps and decides he doesn’t have time to stand here arguing with Henry about the Ram’s windows.

He heads for the back door of the police station, and two of the blue-white arcs cast his shadow double on the fog, one dark head north and one south.

Part-time officers Holtz and Nestler pull in behind the car bearing Gilbertson, Lund, Dulac, and Potter. We don’t care much about Holtz and Nestler. Next in line is Jesperson and Tcheda, with Railsback and Morton Fine in the back seat (Morty is complaining about the lack of knee room). We care about Railsback, but he can wait. Next into the lot—oh, this is interesting, if not entirely unexpected: Wendell Green’s beat-up red Toyota, with the man himself behind the wheel. Around his neck is his backup camera, a Minolta that’ll keep taking pictures as long as Wendell keeps pressing the button. No one from the Sand Bar—not yet—but there is one more car waiting to turn into the already crowded lot. It’s a discreet green Saab with a POLICE POWER sticker on the left side of the bumper and one reading HUGS NOT DRUGS on the right. Behind the wheel of the Saab, looking stunned but determined to do the right thing (whatever the right thing might be), is Arnold “the Mad Hungarian” Hrabowski.

Standing in a line against the brick wall of the police station are the Thunder Five. They wear identical denim vests with gold 5’s on the left breast. Five sets of meaty arms are crossed on five broad chests. Doc, Kaiser Bill, and Sonny wear their hair in thick ponytails. Mouse’s is cornrowed tonight. And Beezer’s floods down over his shoulders, making him look to Jack a little like Bob Seger in his prime. Earrings twinkle. Tats flex on huge biceps.

“Armand St. Pierre,” Jack says to the one closest the door. “Jack Sawyer. From Ed’s?” He holds out his hand and isn’t exactly surprised when Beezer only looks at it. Jack smiles pleasantly. “You helped big-time out there. Thanks.”

Nothing from the Beez.

“Is there going to be trouble with the intake of the prisoner, do you think?” Jack asks. He might be asking if Beezer thinks it will shower after midnight.

Beezer watches over Jack’s shoulder as Dale, Bobby, and Tom help George Potter from the back of the cruiser and begin walking him briskly toward the back door. Wendell Green raises his camera, then is nearly knocked off his feet by Danny Tcheda, who doesn’t even have the pleasure of seeing which asshole he’s bumped. “Watch it, dickweed,” Wendell squawks.

Beezer, meanwhile, favors Jack—if that is the word—with a brief, cold glance. “Wellnow,” he says. “We’ll have to see how it shakes out, won’t we?”

“Indeed we will,” Jack agrees. He sounds almost happy. He pushes in between Mouse and Kaiser Bill, making himself a place: the Thunder Five Plus One. And perhaps because they sense he doesn’t fear them, the two wide-boys make room. Jack crosses his own arms over his chest. If he had a vest, an earring, and a tattoo, he really would fit right in.

The prisoner and his custodians kill the distance between the car and the building quickly. Just before they reach it, Beezer St. Pierre, spiritual leader of the Thunder Five and father of Amy, whose liver and tongue were eaten, steps in front of the door. His arms are still folded. In the heartless glare of the parking lot lights, his massive biceps are blue.

Bobby and Tom suddenly look like guys with a moderate case of the flu. Dale looks stony. And Jack continues to smile gently, arms placidly crossed, seeming to gaze everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Get out of the way, Beezer,” Dale says. “I want to book this man.”

And what of George Potter? Is he stunned? Resigned? Both? It’s hard to tell. But when Beezer’s bloodshot blue eyes meet Potter’s brown ones, Potter does not drop his gaze. Behind him, the lookie-loos in the parking lot fall silent. Standing between Danny Tcheda and Dit Jesperson, Andy Railsback and Morty Fine are gawking. Wendell Green raises his camera and then holds his breath like a sniper who’s lucked into a shot—just one, mind you—at the commanding general.

“Did you kill my daughter?” Beezer asks. The gentle inquiry is somehow more terrible than any raw yell could have been, and the world seems to hold its breath. Dale makes no move. In that moment he seems as frozen as the rest of them. The world waits, and the only sound is a low, mournful hoot from some fogbound boat on the river.

“Sir, I never killed no one,” Potter says. He speaks softly and without emphasis. Although he has expected nothing else, the words still box Jack’s heart. There is an unexpected painful dignity in them. It’s as if George Potter is speaking for all the lost good men of the world.

“Stand aside, Beezer,” Jack says gently. “You don’t want to hurt this guy.”

And Beezer, looking suddenly not at all sure of himself, does stand aside.

Before Dale can get his prisoner moving again, a raucously cheerful voice—it can only be Wendell’s—yells out: “Hey! Hey, Fisherman! Smile for the camera!”

They all look around, not just Potter. They have to; that cry is as insistent as fingernails dragged slowly down a slate blackboard. White light strobes the foggy parking lot—one! two! three! four!—and Dale snarls. “Aw, fuck me till I cry! Come on, you guys! Jack! Jack, I want you!”